Excerpted From Raising a socially successful child by Stephen Nowicki. Copyright © 2024 by Stephen Nowicki. Little, Brown Spark, which is an imprint Little, Brown and Company, has granted permission for the use of this image. New York, NY All rights Reserved
As a young parent, you have much control over your child’s social life. You can choose who he interacts with, for how long, and even where. This changes once your child enters school. Suddenly, these decisions — with whom to be friends, how much time to spend with a friend and how to spend that time together — are made largely on his own (though teachers may also play an important role). Children can form lasting friendships at school, but they can also experience rejection or isolation due to nonverbal signals that are sent and misinterpreted.
From the late childhood phase on, any friendship a child forms follows a pattern. This sequence, which Marshall Duke and myself first codified in the 1980s provides a template of the relationships that these children will form when they become adults. You can also choose to A candidate for friendship ,…
